The King of Excuses

The week prior to the downgrade of US credit by S&P, President Obama and his spokesman took four separate occasions to cast blame for the poor economy on the Japanese tsunami, the Arab Spring, the “unrest” in Europe and the rise in oil prices. The lousy economy predates all of those, and his policies have made a bad economy much worse. Now that the downgrade on our credit has happened, the president sent out David Axelrod, John Kerry and the usual suspects to blame the Tea Party. They even called it the “Tea Party downgrade,” a line so cynical and dishonest it catches your breath.

The Tea Party exists to put the brakes on federal spending. It began with an anti-spending rant and gathered steam after its first public events on tax day in 2009. The Tea Party itself is a warning and a plea to cut spending. Its members worked hard and elected a freshman class in Congress and across state governments that has cutting spending as its mandate. As S&P made clear in their downgrade warning in April and in its notice on Friday, it’s the spending that is the problem. It’s the spending that has caused uncertainty over America’s capability of paying our debts. It’s the spending, stupid. Blaming the Tea Party for something they exist to oppose is childish. But we have a cynical, immature Alinksyite in the White House and in total control of the Democratic Party. Accepting responsibility for his own failures will probably never even occur to Obama or anyone around him. Responsibility is for suckers. Barack Obama has become the King of Excuses.